Divided minds

Published : Jun 06, 2008 00:00 IST

Partition has led to sectarian strife in Pakistan; in India it fuels the Sangh Parivars hate industry.

You are going away from your motherland. Have you reflected on its consequences? Your fleeing from here will weaken the Muslims of India and a day might well come when the present people of Pakistan will rise to assert their individual identities. Bengalis, Punjabis, Sindhis, Baloch and Pathan will claim separate nationalities. Will not your status in Pakistan then become as precarious and helpless as that of uninvited guests?

Maulana Abul Kalam Azad to a group of Muslims from Uttar Pradesh who were about to leave for Pakistan; Watan (Delhi), March 1948; reproduced in Kamalistan (Delhi), Special Issue on Maulana Azad; March 1986.

CONTRAST the forebodings of this sagacious scholar-politician with the blind, ignorant confidence of the lawyer-politician, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, and one realises the truth of Edmund Burkes aphorism the law sharpens the mind by narrowing it. By any test, the partition of India is one of the 10 greatest tragedies that befell man in all of recorded history. Its evil consequences are still being felt: in Pakistan, where it led to sectarian strife and in India, w here it fuels the hate industry that the Sangh Parivar set up decades before Partition. It is truly The Long Partition of continuing consequences. No one has done greater justice to the subject than Vazira Fazila-Yacoobali Zamindar, Assistant Professor of History at Brown University in the United States. It is a work of stupendous research in primary source.

If Partition is a tragedy of monumental proportions, the resolution on partition adopted by the All India Muslim League at its 27th session in Lahore on March 24, 1940, must rank as one of the historical documents of great and lasting consequences. (It was moved on March 23, hence the celebrations on that day.) The events of that year, immediately preceding and following the resolution, merit close study. A person charged with the duty of compiling pertinent material from the archives owes a duty to the world of scholarship.

Judging by past form established in earlier volumes, no one should be surprised that Z.H. Zaidi has failed miserably. It is one of the least informative volumes. The reader learns little he does not know. But then, Zaidi is a scholar, if at all, of slender credentials. There is not a single work of original historical research to his credit. He exercises an incubus-like hold on the project. The Foreword assures us that messages and routine matters have been excluded. Earlier volumes abounded in such: for instance, a bidi manufacturers request to Jinnah to be allowed to use his name in his trade. Such stuff could be entertaining were it not for the disgust it arouses in a serious work.

Of what historic significance is a letter by someone expressing sadness at an earthquake in Turkey? A United Provinces villagers complaint of excesses? Or a pleaders letter forwarding the literary masterpieces he had sent to two dailies but which neither had the sense to appreciate? A city Muslim Leagues resolution on a punitive tax or a letter from Pune advocating a coalition Union of Indian nations (since this editor does not believe in annotations, one is no wiser as to who this genius was; he impressed Zaidi). Nor is one able to understand why letters to editors or letters between two persons unrelated to Jinnah caught his fancy. He does not explain. As before, even anonymous letters to Jinnah are published. Every leader receives such mail as a matter of routine. In no such compilation, published in our region or abroad, will you find the kind of inanities that the editor-in-chief of this volume relishes.

The introduction to a volume like this should explain what led Jinnah to get the Pakistan resolution passed, changing course abruptly. The editors Introduction asserts that the Lahore resolution signified the acme of Muslim political thought and consciousness which had progressively evolved since the tragic debacle of 1857. This is a historical falsehood and reveals the sheer bankruptcy of scholarship and the passions of a self-appointed propagandist of the establishment, the like of whom can be identified in Indias academia as well. Like Zaidi, they have done well from state patronage.

The fault, however, lies not with the Government of Pakistan. Hasan Zaheer was given access to Jinnahs papers for his book The Times and Trial of the Rawalpindi Conspiracy 1951. He published revealing documents of 1947, which Zaidi studiously omitted. It is Zaidi the propagandist, not the government, who is the censor. If it were otherwise, self-respect would demand that he resign.

The Leagues Working Committee set the ball rolling, on March 26, 1939, by setting up a committee with Jinnah as president, Liaquat Ali Khan as convener and seven provincial leaders as members to examine various schemes already propounded and those submitted to Jinnah and to report their conclusions. The Leagues Council endorsed it on April 8, 1939.

Jinnah was being pressed by friends and critics alike to propound a concrete alternative to the federation under the Act of 1935, which he rejected. There were schemes aplenty in the field, including a hare-brained one by Dr. S.A. Latif in his monograph Muslim Problem in India (1939). He envisaged culturally autonomous zones and transfers of population, religion being identical with culture. Jinnah had no time for this busybody as he rightly called him.

On February 6, 1940, the Leagues Working Committee passed a resolution that read: The Committee considered the question of Muslim demands and future constitution of India. The following broad outlines were agreed to: i) Musalmans are not a minority in the ordinary sense of the word. They are a nation. ii) British system of democratic parliamentary party system of government is not suited to the genius and condition of the people of India. iii) Those zones which are composed of majority of Musalmans on the physical map of India should be constituted into independent Dominions in direct relationship with Great Britain. iv) In those zones where Muslims are in minority their interest and those of other minorities must be adequately and effectively safeguarded and similar safeguards shall be provided for the Hindus and other minorities in the Muslim zones. The various units in each zone shall form component parts of the Federation in that zone as autonomous units. The Lahore resolution was based on those points, but it nowhere asserted that Muslims are a nation. The draft prepared by the Premier of Punjab, Sir Sikandar Hayat Khan, envisaged a loose centre. It was omitted at the very last minute by Jinnah. Sikander publicly repudiated the resolution in the Punjab Assembly in 1941.

By April 1940, Jinnah had won assurances from the Viceroy and the Secretary of State that there would be no attempt to impose by force a Constitution on any section of the people. The British governments famous statement of August 8, 1940, accepted this principle. All Jinnah had to do was to mobilise the Muslims under his leadership and negotiate. It was not all that easy. His devoted follower at the Aligarh Muslim University, Jamilud Din Ahmad, wrote to Jinnah that while the students were moved by the resolution I am sorry to say that many members of the Staff of this University, who should have been the pioneers and inspirers of this idea, are stuck in the old ruts. Muslim India is in the grip of a State of War but the generality of Aligarh professors, with a few exceptions, are supremely indifferent. They take things easy and make merry. I am bringing this to your notice with a heavy heart as I am a member of this body. But I would submit it to you that the League as League must now have [sic.] its attention to the administration of the University and release it from anti-Islamic and reactionary elements whose hold, I am sorry to say, is increasing (emphasis added).

The volume shows that Jinnah had gained considerable ascendancy as Quaide-i-Azam by 1940, was tightening his hold over senior colleagues and had acquired an appeal in South India as well. Periyar E.V. Ramaswamy Naicker wired on February 23, 1940: Glad inform you compulsory Hindi cancelled. This was in reply to Jinnahs wire congratulating him on his stand on Hindi. In a footnote the editor says not printed. Why is Jinnahs cable suppressed while space was found for trivia?

Jinnah corresponded with P. Balasubramanya Mudaliar, who offered him space in his paper, Sunday Observer. Jinnah evinced interest in Dravidistan but shrewdly withheld his support. His astuteness was tested by Sir Sikander and A.K. Fazlul Haq, Premier of Bengal, who wished to support the war effort. Jinnah refused. He was no ones man but his own.

Communal feeling had become so rife by then that Vallabhbhai Patel saw nothing wrong in writing to a colleague, on August 2, 1940, a propos the acquittal of Muslims in a riot case in Bhavnagar: Hindu Raja, Hindu Minister, Hindu Judge [and] Hindus were murdered; under such circumstances when Hindus get such justice, what fault [is there] of Muslims. One understands the battle Jawaharlal Nehru had to fight for secularism and why the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) hate him so intensely. In this battle these bodies received moral help from Pakistans mistreatment of its minorities.

Scholars have done scant justice to the service Lionel Carter has rendered by his excellent compilations. He was a member of the team, led by Nicholas Mansergh, which produced the official series Documents on the Transfer of Power to India, 1942-47. From 1980 to 1999, he served as Secretary and Librarian of the Centre of South Asian Studies at Cambridge. In 2003, he published Mountbattens Report on the Last Royalty 22 March-15 August 1947 and followed it by compiling and editing the fortnightly reports by the Governors of Punjab, from October 19, 1936, to August 14, 1947, in four volumes, all published by Manohar. His introductions are a delight to read. The annotations and other references testify to a sure grasp of the subject. The contrast with Zaidi and his volumes is stark. Since Punjab was crucial to the establishment of Pakistan, Carters volumes provide indispensable insights. Leaguers had no qualms in telling Governors that in their view Pakistan was impracticable. On May 6, 1940, Nehru said it would not last 24 hours.

The Governors foresaw that it would spell the partition of Punjab and wondered why the Congress did not bring home to the Leagues leaders in Punjab that they would lose their lands in East Punjab, as they did in 1947 to their dismay. Sir Sikandars scheme was designed to bring home these realties to the Muslims.

Sir Evan Jenkins realised how crucial the Gurdaspur district was. It had 5,90,000 Muslims and 5,60,000 non-Muslims. Three of its tehsils had small Muslim majorities. The Pathankot tehsil, necessary for access to Kashmir, had a non-Muslim majority. His letter to the Viceroy, Lord Wavell, on The Punjab Problem (March 7, 1947) reflects the homework he had done. By April 1947, Jinnah had, in private, accepted a truncated Pakistan while publicly assuring his followers he would not yield one bit.

Nehru raised the issue of the partition of Gurdaspur with Mountbatten and Jenkins as early as on May 11, 1947. Jenkins differed. The Muslims were fairly equally mixed throughout the district. Radcliffes boundary award gave the tehsil to India.

If the massacres came as a shock to the leaders of both parties it was because they had wilfully shut their eyes to the riots that occurred in 1946. Even Mumbai was badly affected.

Two developments in 1947 revealed the shape of things to come. On June 25, 1947, Jenkins reported to Mountbatten: I have no doubt that the political parties approve and in some measure direct the outrages. I do not mean that Jinnah, Nehru and Patel or even Mamdot and Sachar personally abet murder and/or arson. But somewhere connected with the party organisations here there are people who control the campaign and are given the money to do so. Fire raisers actually caught include an Indian Christian (at Rs.15) and three Purbia Hindus (salary not stated) who had been engaged to burn Hindu property. Evidence is accumulating that on the Hindu side the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh are the organisers. This body has highly respectable gentlemen at its head, but it makes and uses bombs, and acquires and distributes arms and ammunition. It has close contacts with the Congress.

On July 30, 1947, the Akali leader Giani Kartar Singh met the Governor. Jenkins recorded: The Giani Sahib gave me some interesting information on the future of East Punjab. He said that the Sikhs favoured the amalgamation of the non-Punjabi speaking districts with the U.P. [United Provinces] or with another new province. They would then try to organise what remained of East Punjab as a Sikh majority province. The Sikh states would come in with them on this they had not of course given the Hindus any idea of their intentions yet, as they wanted Hindu help over the boundary question.

Finally, the Giani Sahib burst into tears, as at our last interview, and said that it was my duty to protect his small and oppressed community. I replied that the question of the boundary was not in my hands and that I had no power to interfere. He and Master Tara Singh have certainly made a great mess of the whole Sikh question. The real solution was to get rid of the non-Punjabi speaking districts and to keep the rest of the Punjab in Pakistan. I think the Sikhs appreciate this now, but it is too late to do anything about it. The seeds of the Punjabi Suba agitation were sown at the time of the partition.

It is amazing how openly Indian politicians unburdened themselves before British Governors and Viceroys. As late as in October 1945, Firoz Khan Noon spoke to Governor Bertrand Glancy, notoriously hostile to the League, in terms that reveal his lack of self-respect: Firoz Khan Noon told me frankly enough that he did not believe in Pakistan as preached by the Muslim League; in fact he went so far as to say that he heartily wished that the term Pakistan had never been invented. He also freely admitted that, even if the Leaguers secured a large percentage of seats in the Punjab Assembly, they could never form a stable government, since non-Muslims could not be expected to combine with them as long as the Pakistan cry continues. His programme, so far as I could understand, was to secure as many seats as possible for the League on the Pakistan issue and when the elections were over to explain to non-Muslims that the Leaguers did not really mean what they said. I told him that, if this was his policy, surely the most reasonable and honest line to take was to give out that the League would be prepared to consider other forms of Pakistan if they were found satisfactory, and thus heal the breach in the Muslim ranks. His reaction to this was that he could not be expected to have the courage to adopt this line. This toady of the British rose to be the Prime Minister of Pakistan.

The Congress had nothing to offer even to Muslims critical of Jinnah or the ones who had serious reservations about partition. Their concerns were completely ignored. Azad was marginalised. Punjabs Leaguers were very pleased with the Cabinet Missions Plan of May 16, 1946, for a United India based on autonomous Groups of Provinces. The Congress sabotaged it.

On May 27, 1946, Jenkins foresaw that if a Province refused to take part in the Group discussions. The plan would break down. It is part of the plan that the right to leave the Group shall be exercised after, and not before, the Group Constitution is framed. Yet on December 15, 1946, Gandhi told Assams leaders that Assam should not go into the Sections [that would form the Groups]. Else I will say that Assam had only manikins [sic.] and no men (Political History of Assam; volume 3; Publication Board Assam; page 380). That sealed the fate of the Cabinet Missions Plan.

Baldev Singh told the Governor on May 27, 1946, that he had already had tentative proposals from Jinnah (apparently through Qazi Muhammad Isa of Baluchistan) for cooperation between the Sikhs and the Muslims with a view to the drafting of a strong Group Constitution. In return for this cooperation, the Muslims would concede generous weightage to the Sikhs in the civil services. They also intended to claim for Group B 40 per cent of the total strength of the Defence services, and would see that the Sikhs got their share in these services too. Baldev Singh said that an offer of this kind could be made superficially most attractive, and he thought that some Sikhs might in fact be attracted by it, though it was quite contrary to his own ideas. Jinnah had telephoned to him only this morning suggesting an interview, but he had replied that in the present state of Sikh feeling it was impossible for him to see Jinnah without weakening his own position.

Already by June 1946 the situation in Kashmir was coming to a boil. Jenkins reported to Wavell on June 29, 1946: Punjab feelings on Kashmir affairs normally follows communal rather than party lines. The Muslims mistrust and dislike the Maharaja and his government, and sympathise with popular or nationalist movements within the State, the Hindus on the other hand respect the Maharaja as a great Hindu Prince, and are prepared to justify action on his part which they would think quite unjustifiable in British India or in a Muslim State.

Vazira Fazila-Yacoobali Zamindars work is a comprehensive exposure of the consequences of the follies of the leaders of the Congress and the League. The exodus of refugees brought in its train problems of relief and resettlement, the permit system followed by passports and visas, and the ruinous laws on evacuee property. Her accounts of the Muslim exodus from Delhi and the Hindu exodus from Karachi reveal a lot. Delhis Deputy Commissioner M.S. Randhawa earned deserved notoriety for his communal behaviour. The Chief Commissioner, Sahibzada Khurshid Ahmad, was undermined.

The author was surprised to discover, as many readers will be now when it is recalled, that in 1948, within months after Partition, the tide turned and large numbers of north Indian Muslim refugees began to return to their homes in India. This return had enormous significance, for the first restrictions on movement in the region came in the form of an emergency permit system instituted by the Indian government to stem this tide and led to the introduction of citizenship provision ahead of the Constitution itself. Differences arose between Nehru and the group comprising Patel, Rajendra Prasad and very many others.

Randhawa minuted on June 1, 1948: There are rumours that some trouble will take place in the last week of June the return of Muslims in large numbers from Pakistan and the occupation of houses which have been lying vacant seems to be the major cause of these rumours. The refugees were living in the hope that they will be able to get these houses, but with the return of Muslims, these hopes are vanishing. Consequently they want to create panic among Muslims, by spreading rumours that some trouble will take place. Creation of so-called Muslim zones which are nothing but miniature Pakistan is also resented.

Khurshid Ahmad pencilled on the margin: I hope when D.C. says they are nothing but miniature Pakistan he is not explaining his own views but the views held by unbalanced refugees.

In his autobiography, Maulana Azad criticised Khurshid as a weak and ineffectual officer who was afraid to show favour to Muslims and so allowed Randhawa to control affairs and treat Muslims unfairly in the riots. On August 10, 1948, Rajendra Prasad wrote to Nehru expressing alarm. The Muslim would demand to be treated on his return to India as a national of India and in the same way as any other national.

The author is as unsparing of the policies of Pakistan. It shut its doors to Muslims on economic grounds. Its policies towards the minorities were blatantly discriminatory. What kind of histories can reckon with this complex situation?

She holds: The partition of 1947 in many senses is not behind us. Since the destruction of the Babri mosque in Ayodhya, U.P. on December 6, 1992, signalling the rise of the Hindu right in India, and the communal violence that followed when chants of Jao Pakistan, ya Kabrastan (go to Pakistan or your graves) rang alongside attacks on Muslim communities across north India, the invocation of Partition and Pakistan reacquired a sinister meaning for Muslim minorities in India. The Hindu rights repeated portrayal of Muslims as invasive outsiders to India tied to a militant monotheism and temple destruction combines with the notion that Partition represented an inevitable parting of ways of two incompatible religious communities. To this day a spectrum of political opinion, from those fighting for a secular vision of India to those who imagine it as essentially Hindu, continues to draw upon different understandings of and lessons from Partition to argue for Muslim inclusion or exclusion in their imagings of modern India.

Similarly, the rise of the Muhajir Qaumi Movement (MQM) in Karachi and Sind and its violent confrontations with the Pakistani state in the mid-1990s also drew upon narratives of Partition. The MQM expressed Muhajir disenchantment from political power in Pakistan by arguing that they had made the most sacrifices for the very creation of Pakistan by leaving their homes in India, and yet had failed to be completely accepted as Pakistanis.

Maulana Azads predictions of 1948 have proved all too true.

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